MSNBC reports that Donald Trump invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination more than 440 times during his deposition Wednesday with New York Attorney General Leticia James in a civil suit relating to possible fraudulent accounting practices at the Trump Organization.

Trump took the Fifth for every question asked by the AG’s team in the civil case, meaning James can use the fact that Trump took the Fifth as an adverse inference against himself, because by legally using the Fifth, Trump must believe that his response would get him in possible trouble criminally..

Marge on ‘roids very mad.  Marge on ‘roids very VERY mad.  Georgia Congresswoman who thinks Oedipus is a great name for her son’s cat (“Yeah, and like, Ed O. Puss!  Get it?” “Oh, Marge…”) Marjorie Taylor Green sets up quite an impressively detailed scenario about what happened during the FBI warrant execution at Mar-a-Lago.

Then they rifle through all the personal belonging of President Trump, Melania, Barron, every single person that has a, has a residence there.  They rifled through all of their personal belongings and then confiscated and took whatever they wanted to take, and they blew open President Trump’s safe. That is such a violation of his privacy.  It’s a violation of our laws.  It’s a violation of who we are as, as Americans.  It’s a violation of our Constitution.  But that’s what the FBI did.  So they can not walk away from this empty-handed.  They cannot afford to.  They can’t afford to, because they’re gonna be in trouble.

FBI Director Christopher Wray on Wednesday warned MAGA terrorists will find themselves met with the business end of a bureau service weapon if they fuck with his agents amid a Trump fanboy meltdown over the Monday raid of Mar-a-Lago, the AP reports. “I’m always concerned about threats to law enforcement,” said Wray. “Violence against law enforcement is not the answer, no matter who you’re upset with.” Wray also, without a hint of irony called the threats “deplorable.”

An analysis of on-line chatter on social media platforms found hate speech targeting LGBTQ people increased by more than 400% in the aftermath of the Florida legislature passing the “Don’t Say Gay” bill supported by Republican Governor Ron DeSantis.

The study, cosponsored by the Center for Countering Digital Hate and the Human Rights Campaign, also found that the use of the term “groomer” jumped a whopping 1,200%, as did the frequency of using the words “predator” and “pedophile,” frequently-used slurs against the LGBTQ community.

Another aspect of the study:  the most-influential users of those anti-LGBTQ slur.  Number one on the list:  Equine American and shoe model for the “seconds bin” Congressoman Marjorie Taylor Greene (Q-GA) had tweets using one or more of those terms reached more than 18 million viewers.  Colorado Republican Congresswoman and cowgirl-if-ya-pay-her (allegedly) Lauren Boebert was third on the list.

Please refer to Truth Social for Adam’s most recent statement and for any future statements.

Truth Social:@adamsteen24

— Adam Steen (@steenforus) August 10, 2022

Several Republican members of the Pennsylvania state House and Senate were paid visits by FBI agents serving subpoenas on Tuesday and Wednesday in the ongoing investigation into the failed Trump 2020 coup attempt, PennLive.com reports. The visits came as MAGA Congressman Scott Perry had his phone confiscated by FBI agents on Tuesday, and may signal a second sweep of Trump minions by federal law enforcement following the June “Order 66” coordinated subpoenas and raids on fake electors and other MAGA scumbags tied to the plot to overthrow democracy.

A new story from the Right Side Broadcasting Network–or RSBN–shows the Trump-owned Truth Social rocketing up in popularity among social media users, trailing only Facebook in popularity, and beating YouTube, Twitter, Tik Tok and Instagram.

Obviously, Truth Social CEO Devin Nunes will be thrilled with these numbers, that measure the percentage of people who use the platforms… based on a self-reported poll taken of attendees at the latest CPAC Performance Arts and Fascism Festival.

Truth Social has a reported 2 million regular users.  Facebook has 2.9 billion (with a “b”) regular users worldwide.  Twitter has 290 million regular users.

Well the real headline should be the New York Times filed a motion to intervene and unseal the fucker because it’s pretty clear Trump’s lawyers aren’t going to do make it public. Still funny the case’s adversaries are “UNITED STATES OF AMERICA” and “SEALED SEARCH WARRANT”

Soaking in the outrage and anger percolating from the conservative shoutosphere over the FBI search of Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago supper club, it becomes clear that they’re working on a whole slew of incorrect assumptions to justify their fiery rhetoric about an overreaching government.  The big one, of course, is that Trump is being targeted solely for political purposes, not because he broke the law.

The incorrect assumption that underlies that claim is that Trump had every right to possess the papers because, when he was President, he had the ability to declassify information at will, and by taking classified papers to Mar-a-Lago in the last days of his terms obviously meant that he declassified them.  Therefore, this faulty line of thought goes, he cannot be accused of illegally possessing classified documents.

First, regardless of whether the documents were classified or not, they are not Trump’s property.  They’re the property of the American people.  The Presidential Records Act details that all official communications and documents created or received by the President and the White House go to the National Archives–not Mar-a-Lago–at the end of the office holder’s term.  So any documents, classified or not, should not be housed at Mar-a-Lago unless they are officially on loan from the National Archives.  And the boxes of documents were not.

All three key indices finished at three-month highs after a report put inflation at a lower-than-expected rate, reducing fears of a recession when combined with last week’s stronger-than-expected jobs report, CNBC reports.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average, S&P 500 and NASDAQ all finished at their highest levels since early may after inflation was recorded to have slowed and month-after-month consumer prices stayed flat.  Core inflation, which strips out volatile food and fuel prices, also had a lower-than-expected increasing, prompting investors to invest more than they would if they saw a recession looming.

“The deceleration in the Consumer Price Index for July is likely a big relief for the Federal Reserve, especially since the Fed insisted that inflation was transitory, which was incorrect. … If we continue to see declining inflation prints, the Federal Reserve may start to slow the pace of monetary tightening,” said Nancy Davis, founder of Quadratic Capital Management.

👀 The FBI is AGAIN sending undercover informants to target President Trump?

It’s the Crossfire Hurricane debacle, all over again.

This time, likely, at the behest of the Attorney General. https://t.co/f8FXr74qer

— Ted Cruz (@tedcruz) August 10, 2022

It seems clear that if Ted Cruz is accusing the FBI of somehow sending an undercover informant to infiltrate Trump’s inner circle of minions then he’s probably the informant himself. Trying to throw off suspicion by complaining about it is such a Ted Cruz-like rookie move. It’s gotta be him.

Trump-endorsed Republican Wisconsin governor candidate Tim Michels removed “Endorsed by President Trump” from his campaign website less than 24 hours after winning the primary, the New York Times’ Reid Epstein reports. Kind of a funny reversal of the old “loyalty only goes one way with Trump” trope and following in the weasely footsteps of Mehmet Oz, who pulled the same move.

American pseudofood delivery service Domino’s has shuttered its last 29 franchises in Italy, claiming that the shutdown was due to consumers returning to their old habits of going out to eat and not relying on delivery services as they did during the pandemic, Bloomberg reported.

Shockingly, however, Italians did not cotton to the menu of the American company, which promoted pizza as a platform for variations of cheeseburger, Buffalo chicken and cheesesteak toppings.

The history of pizza starts in Italy, with the word first being used in the town of Gaeta around the year 1000 A.D.  Pizza is very different in its home country than what Americans tend to think of it:  dough, tomato sauce (sometimes), cheese and virtually any food that you want, from pineapple to anchovies to gyro meat.  And while Italian pizza varies from town to town, American versions run a much wider spectrum from “stuffed” pizzas to a casserole called Chicago deep dish pizza. 

A completely fake Yahoo News/YouGov survey has the woke Satanic socialist party leading the America First party 44% to 38% on the generic congressional ballot. The fake poll also asked respondents what they thought of the Inflation Reduction Act and lied saying 52% of respondents support it while 31% were right that it is socialism. Only 12% of respondents approve of QAnon in the fake poll, which means 88% of Americans are groomers, which seems low too.

The US Department of Justice has charged a member of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps to hire a contract killer to assassinate John Bolton, one of the six people to serve as National Security Advisor during the Trump Administration, CNN reports.

Apparently acting in retaliation for the January 2020 assassination of  Qasem Soleimani, the head of the Revolutionary Guard who was reportedly in charge of Iran’s foreign relations with terrorist groups.  Soleimani was killed in a US drone attack while on a diplomatic mission to Iraq, and his assassination raised tensions in the region, prompting Iran to launch a series of missile attacks against the Baghdad Green Zone, injuring dozens of US service members.  After initially claiming there were no casualties from the retaliatory attacks, Donald Trump claimed that a handful of wounded personnel had suffered “headaches.”  That assessment was updated weeks later by the Pentagon, who said more than 50 individuals suffered traumatic brain injuries and at least two had been injured when they were blown out of a watch tower from a blast.

According to the indictment, 45-year-old Shahram Poursafi had contacted individuals in the United States, offering $400,000 to someone for the assassination of Bolton, who was the National Security Advisor at the time of the attack.  The person Poursafi contacted was a “confidential human source” for the FBI.  Poursafi is not in custody and is believed to be in Iran.

The Pew Research Center has found that 63% of Americans support something that will never, ever happen, the abolition of the Electoral College and switching to a nationwide popular vote to elect Presidents, which again will never, ever happen – okay fine fucking maybe it’ll happen but it’s a very long ways off, NPR reports. 35% are still in favor of it because whatever shitty excuses.

Even 42% of Republican respondents support switching, though we question whether or not they understand Trump would have no chance of winning in 2024 if the electoral college were abolished.

🇷🇺 In Russia, Putin’s goons on Wednesday raided the home of Marina Ovsyannikova, the former TV journalist who protested the Ukraine war on air in March. Probably to plant evidence of a crime.

?? In Pakistan, Shahbaz Gill, an ally of former President Imran Khan was arrested and a TV station taken off the air Tuesday for broadcasting Gill’s allegedly “seditious” comments about the country’s army. Not really clear which side is less evil here since Khan is a scumbag too.

?? In Uganda, authorities last week banned an LGBTQ rights group “with immediate effect”, saying they hadn’t filled out all the required registration paperwork to operate as a legal entity.

?? In Myanmar, Japanese journalist Toru Kubota faces a lengthy prison sentence on fake visa violation charges after his arrest last week while covering a protest against the ruling junta.

Bloomberg reports that Donald Trump is refusing to answer questions in the deposition being conducted by the New York State Attorney General in the investigation of the Trump Organization’s alleged manipulation of property values to avoid paying taxes.

“Under the advice of my counsel and for all of the above reasons, I declined to answer the questions under the rights and privileges afforded to every citizen under the United States Constitution,” Trump said in an emailed statement released shortly after he arrived at the attorney general’s office in New York City Wednesday morning, Bloomberg reports. “I once asked, ‘If you’re innocent, why are you taking the Fifth Amendment?’ Now I know the answer to that question.”

Do you remember Devin Nunes, the failed fake Republican farmer who, while representing a California Congressional district, made a midnight run to Donald Trump’s White House allegedly pass along confidential information his committee found regarding one of the early Trump Administration scandals?  Well, he’s now the CEO of Trump’s failing social media platform (Trump’s fourth attempt at breaking into online media) but still believes he has political power.  Oh, and he’s suing a fictitious cow for defamation but has udderly [sic] no chance of winning.

Well, now Nunes claims that because the Department of Justice requested, received and executed a court-issued search warrant for classified information and other government material Trump stashed at Mar-a-Lago, Republicans must reopen a series of investigations into things like Benghazi, Hillary’s buttery males, and various other things that Nunes-led committees held dozens of hearings are (back in 2016) because obviously the Department of Justice is corrupt and cannot be trusted by the American people because they’re enforcing the law against a private citizen who once had a political career, much like Nunes himself.